An MIT Algorithm Predicts the Future by Watching TV

NBCThe next time you catch your robot watching sitcoms, don’t assume it’s slacking off. It may be hard at work. TV shows and video clips can help artificially intelligent systems learn about and anticipate human interactions, according to MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Researchers created an algorithm that analyzes video, then uses what it learns to predict how humans will behave. Six-hundred hours of clips from shows like The Office and Big Bang Theory let the AI learned to identify high-fives, handshakes, hugs, and kisses. Then it learned what the moments leading to those interactions looked like. After the AI devoured all that video to train itself, the researchers fed the algorithm a single frame from a video it had not seen and tasked it with predicting what would happen…